The Deming approach

Moving beyond strategy and organizational structure, W. Edwards Deming has emphasized the role that management should take in quality improvement. Deming defines quality as continuous improvement of a stable system. This definition emphasizes two things. First, all systems (administrative, design, production, and sales) must be stable in a statistical sense. This requires that measurements be taken of quality attributes throughout the company and monitored over time. If these measurements have a constant variance around a constant average, the system is stable. The second aspect of Deming’s definition is continuous improvement of the various systems to reduce variation and better meet the customer’s needs.

Deming stresses that top executives should manage for the long-run and not sacrifice quality for short-run profits. Deming believes that excessive attention to quarterly profit reports and short-run objectives has distracted top management from focusing on customer service and long-run quality improvement. He also argues, as others do, that management should cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality and stress prevention of defects instead. Deming suggests that this should be accomplished by the training of all employees, good supervision, and use of statistical procedures.

Deming goes on to exhort management to break down barriers between departments and to encourage people to work together to produce quality products and services. He thinks that many of the work standards, individual performance pay systems, and quotas used by companies get in the way of cooperation among individuals and departments and thus impede quality im­provement.

Deming has been a strong advocate of statistical process control ideas. Quality cannot be improved by trying harder. Workers and managers must have the proper tools to identify causes of variation, to control variation, and to reduce variation in the product.

Deming has successfully taught his ideas to the Japanese and is credited, along with Juran, with helping to improve quality in Japanese industry. The Japanese attribute much of their success to American ideas, which they have thoroughly implemented. Lately, American industry is also rediscovering many of these basic ideas and is once again stressing quality as a key to survival and success.

Now that we have covered some definitions of quality, its impact on strategy, and management principles, we will move into more details on how to manage quality. This will involve measuring the cost of quality and implementing programs to improve quality by “doing it right the first time”.

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